Glen Tate - 299 Days - The Preparation

Grant used reloads for training. These were cartridges that had been fired once (or more) and then a new bullet, primer, and powder were put on. Some guys, like Pow, reloaded their own ammunition. Grant wanted to reload his ammo, but he didn’t have the time to do it and didn’t shoot enough to justify the cost of the reloading equipment. Reloads were about half as much as new ammunition. They weren’t as accurate, but they were still plenty accurate for clanging a steel plate. They would certainly work for defensive purposes, too.

“I’ll take a case of .40 reloads,” Grant told Chip. He had plenty of cash in the envelope. “Oh, hell, two cases” Grant said.

There was nothing more comforting to Grant than buying cases of ammo. A case of ammunition is a very comforting thing for someone who thinks the country is spiraling toward a collapse. Ammo would never be cheaper than it was then, he would use it and have fun, and it was literally a precious metal that was an investment. Most importantly, a case of ammo could save his life and many others’. There was no downside. It was better than spending the money on something like golf clubs.

When Grant was a kid, getting a new pair of shoes before school started was a really big deal. It was his only pair for the year. It meant going to Grossman’s, the “department” store in Forks that was really just a store with a few different things. Grossmans would give him a plastic Easter egg with candy in it when he bought a new pair of shoes. That candy was an event for poor people. And with new shoes, it was easy to forget he was poor.

Grossman’s would give Grant the chance to wear his new shoes out of the store after his mother paid for them. Grant would always say yes. It was such a great feeling to walk out of the store in those new shoes. The thrill of getting something new was magnified by using it right away.

The same was true of guns. Grant took the new Glock to the range immediately. It shot just like the one Pow had loaned him. It was so smooth. And accurate. The holster worked flawlessly; he was getting very fast at drawing that thing. He fired the Glock 22 as fast as he could to see if it jammed. Never. Not once. In the thousands of rounds he put through that gun, it never jammed once.

Grant was ready for the next Sunday afternoon with the Team.

Chip would come by the range every couple Sundays. Chip was pretty good with a carbine and pistol.

The guest instructor on some Sunday afternoons was Special Forces Ted. He would teach the guys basic small arms skills. How to move. How to shoot. How to move and shoot. And communicate. Nothing fancy. No complicated gear or advanced tactics. Ted realized that the Team members were civilians who did this every other weekend.

Special Forces Ted loved it. These young guys worshipped him. Teaching these basic small arms tactics was exactly what Ted had done in the Army. The primary mission of Green Berets was to train allied indigenous fighters behind enemy lines to be guerillas and harass whatever enemy army the U.S. was fighting. Special Forces spend most of their time training raw indigenous recruits in very basic skills. That’s what Ted was doing with these guys. And he had some very good students.

Training with the Team was going great. Grant was getting better with every session. He became so comfortable with an AR and a Glock that they started to seem like pieces of clothing. Comfortable clothing he loved to wear.

Grant was bonding with these guys. They started working on shooting together as two-man and larger teams. They all started watching the Magpul Dynamics training DVDs in between their time out on the range. These DVDs had several hours of expert training on handguns and carbines (a term for short tactical rifles like an AR). They were invaluable. Another fabulous, and free, resource was the availability of hundreds of YouTube videos on shooting, guns, and tactical gear. A particularly good YouTube channel was the one by a guy who went by “Nutnfancy.”

The Team did one thing differently than lots of guys who watched the Magpul DVDs and Nutnfancy videos: they practiced. Instead of sitting in a warm, dry house on a couch and watching people doing tactical things on a TV or computer screen, the Team took what they saw on those screens and went out and practiced. Every other Sunday afternoon they went to the range and coached each other. The DVDs and YouTube videos were a basis for it, but the practice, with live rounds, was how they got good. Really good.

The most valuable training came from Special Forces Ted. Realizing that these guys were civilians and only had ARs and pistols — instead of grenades, machine guns, and air cover — Special Forces

Ted kept the training at what he called the “law enforcement level,” which was short ranges like point blank to about fifty yards, maybe 100 for some situations. With a potential urban battlefield in mind, Ted trained the Team on picking cover, changing out magazines, switching from rifle to pistol, moving, communicating, and shooting, shooting, shooting.

On the range, the Team worked on their communications.

They had standard terms they would yell to each other. “Check” meant they were reloading a magazine or had a jam (very infrequent), so they were temporarily out of commission. They didn’t use the term “Reloading” or “Jam” because, at these short urban warfare distances, an enemy may hear that and know one of the Team was temporarily out of action.

If a member of the Team heard one say “Check,” that meant that the other guy would cover the first member while he fixed the problem. The other guy would yell “OK” to signal that he heard the “Check.” If a member’s rifle ran dry and needed a new magazine, he would usually transition to his pistol, get to a place like behind cover where he could put a fresh magazine in his rifle, holster his pistol, and keep going with his rifle. If a Team member needed to move to another position, he would yell “Moving” so the other guy knew he was moving and could keep track of where he was and wouldn’t shoot him by mistake. The other member would yell “Move” to let the moving member know that he heard him (it was hard to hear when guns are going off). The moving member would go behind the member who yelled “Move” and tap him on the shoulder so he knew the moving member had cleared him, and then take the next position. They were always assessing the scene to find the next piece of cover.

There was a lot of thought that went into gun fighting. The shooting part, the marksmanship to hit a target, was just a small piece of it. Thinking about transitioning between weapons, realizing when one magazine was getting low, changing out empty magazines, communicating, and moving so that they didn’t shoot each other took lots and lots of practice, but it was worth it. And it was the most fun they could have with their pants on.

The Team started incorporating movement into their drills. Moving around while people are shooting live ammunition is something that must be done with great care. Trust was very important among teammates. No one even came close to doing anything — ever — that was dangerous. They always knew exactly where their teammates were and never fired in a dangerous direction. They practiced the movements dozens of times without firing to get a rhythm down.

On those Sunday afternoons, the Team practiced leap-frogging so at least one guy was firing on a target as the others were moving. They practiced sustained fire, which was firing a round every so often to keep the bad guys’ heads down while a teammate reloaded, advanced, or retreated. Communicating all the while. Finding cover and constantly moving, if possible.

After one particularly good training session, Pow seemed a little choked up. He said, “I’d go into a fight with any of you guys.” It was weird and totally understandable at the same time. It was weird because they were civilians and it was peacetime, so there was no logical reason to think there would be a gunfight anytime soon. But it was also understandable because all of the guys knew they were training for something. Some, like Grant, knew exactly what they were training for. Grant knew he wouldn’t tell the Team he was a “survivalist” until later. He didn’t want to seem like a weirdo and have the guys shy away from him.